How Broken Things Heal
Since fracturing my wrist falling backward on ice months ago, I have occasionally felt discouraged by the slow healing process. Recovery has been hampered by so many complications that I have wondered if my wrist will ever function normally again or stop hurting.
A few weeks after the accident, my sister came for a visit. As we lamented my injury, our conversation turned from broken bones to other kinds of brokenness – not the kinds that come from falling, but from being fallen and living in a fallen world.
When a bone breaks, the trauma radiates to the surrounding tissues. Ligaments and tendons stretch and tear; muscles pull away from the bone. Veins are damaged, leaving bruises. Oftentimes, those secondary injuries take longer to heal than the fracture itself. In the same way, living in a world fractured by sin and separation from God leads to wounds that reverberate within us. And as ruptures stretch and tear the fabric of our spiritual well-being, the trauma often ripples to the people around us as well.
The wider and deeper a wound, the more impossible healing and restoration seem. And the more time passes without restoration, the more we tend to resign ourselves to the accompanying pain and sorrow.
But as my sister and I traced one particularly long, painful fault line in our stories and reflected on its collateral damage, it dawned on us: extensive healing had occurred. It was so gradual and invisible that we almost failed to notice its full extent. But the more details we remembered, the more we could see it. Things that seemed beyond repair decades earlier had healed, a fact so improbable that it could only be attributed to God.
God alone, through Christ, is the architect of all healing. Just as we do not control new bone growth and soft tissue recovery, we cannot orchestrate our own healing from any other form of brokenness.
In the first hours and days after my accident, it was clear that I could not help myself. I could not even turn on my body’s healing system – God designed it to begin automatically. External intervention was required to right the bones; a titanium plate and metal screws now hold the fragments of my distal radius together. After surgery, my cellular, nervous, and circulatory systems took over. Besides cooperating with my body’s invisible work, there was nothing I could do.
Likewise, ruptures in our hearts are repaired via the hidden work of God through Christ. By God’s grace, my sister and I had received Christ decades earlier. Like a surgeon, he drew together our broken pieces, not only performing the surgery but also serving as the cross-shaped, titanium plate that holds the fragments together. And ever since, he has been weaving together our circumstances, relationships, and choices to grow and heal us, despite our imperfect cooperation.
Although God promises full restoration to our intended perfection in Christ, he does not guarantee it will be finished in this lifetime. The final fulfillment is in heaven, where “the blind will be able to see, and the deaf will hear. The lame will leap and dance, and those who cannot speak will shout for joy. Streams of water will flow through the desert…” (Isaiah 35:5-6).
But I want the streams to flow through the desert now. Sitting at my desk, rolling a therapy ball for the umpteenth time, I want recovery to move faster. Honestly, I want to accelerate the healing of every broken thing in me and the world. I want to stop making the same mistakes. I want relationships to be easier. I want to love others more. I want Earth to be like Heaven: no tears, no dying, no hatred.
It takes faith to trust in a process so gradual that progress is hard to measure, to trust in a Healer we cannot see. But in Christ, the bones of our souls have been reset as surely as my distal radius has been repaired. The brokenness of the world has been overcome. The story my sister and I share is proof, just one of millions of similar stories, all reminders that even when we are tempted to doubt or feel like giving up, God never fails, and he never gives up on us.
Picking up a glass of water with my right hand, something I could not do a week ago, I feel deep gratitude that God has brought me thus far. The mysterious work of healing every broken thing in my life, including my hand, has been set in motion. While it may feel like nothing is happening (or worse, that I am regressing), God said all will be well, so all will be well.